A payments company that needs stablecoins has typically shopped for them one over-the-counter (OTC) desk at a time, logging into a separate system for each dealer. Quotes often lapse before they can be lined up against one another, and credit limits and balances get reconciled by hand. Fireblocks wants to move that shopping onto its own platform, where, the company says, many of those firms already keep their stablecoin treasuries.
The digital asset infrastructure firm launched Fireblocks Liquidity Market on Thursday. Customers can ask several desks for a price on the same trade, view the quotes next to each other and execute with the desk of their choice, using the credit lines and settlement terms they already have with it.
“The one step still happening outside the platform was the price discovery itself, and execution, negotiated desk by desk over chat and email,” said Ran Goldi, Fireblocks’ chief payments and network officer, in a statement. Moving it inside, he said, means the desks customers trust “can all bid for every trade.”
Two trading firms, B2C2 and Zodia Markets, are quoting prices from day one, according to Fireblocks; Cumberland, FalconX, GSR, Hercle, Nonco and Wintermute are expected to join. MoneyGram, OpenPayd, Reap, TapTapSend and Zepz served as design partners.
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No Spread, No Custody
Fireblocks said it takes no spread on trades. It also stays out of the flow of funds and does not take custody of assets at conversion; the customer and the desk settle with each other directly. At launch the product covers major stablecoins against the dollar, euro, pound and other G10 currencies.
A single view shows credit, margin and balances across connected desks, and Fireblocks’ policy engine enforces trading limits and execution permissions on every connected desk, with quorum approval required to link an account or place an order.
By Fireblocks’ count, trading desks sent payments companies, fintechs and banks nearly $50 billion in stablecoins over its network in the past year.
What Customers Say
MoneyGram, which teamed up with Kraken on crypto-to-cash withdrawals in May, pointed to less liquid markets. “Being able to draw on multiple providers at once, rather than relying on a single desk, is how you build resilience into the hard to reach corridors,” said Anthony Silva, MoneyGram’s senior vice president and treasurer, in the release.
Richard Usher, OpenPayd’s director of trading, said in the release that “every new dealer used to mean a procurement cycle and an integration project before we saw a single quote.”
Fireblocks said Liquidity Market is open to its customers worldwide now and that it will add more providers on a rolling basis.
Related Listen: Stripe Bid $53B for PayPal: Who Actually Wins Stablecoin Payments?
